PORT OF SPAIN, (Jun. 22) IPS - Three years into the first International
Decade for the Eradication of Poverty, countries of the Commonwealth
Caribbean are all experiencing problems reaching social targets. A recent
study conducted by the Jamaica Survey of Living Conditions (JSLC) indicates,
for example, that poverty in the cash-strapped northern Caribbean island has
actually declined. But while the JSLC was pointing to the lowest poverty
figures in over a decade -- 15.9 percent -- access to some basic services
remained mediocre. The JSLC study found that up to 72 percent of poor
households used pit latrines and only 12 percent had indoor plumbing. 

A similar Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) sponsored survey in Belize in1998
found that "deep-seated structural problems of transformation have kept the
population of parts of the country locked in poverty for some considerable
period." The survey concluded that in this lone Central American member of
the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) 25.3 percent of all households and 33
percent of individuals were poor on the basis of their expenditure on food
and non-food items. "Moreover," the study said, "9.6 percent of households
and 13.4 percent of individuals were considered to be extremely poor or
indigent: their level of expenditure was not high enough to enable them to
satisfy their basic food requirements." The problem has moved CDB President
Neville Nicholls to declare that "there is a patent need to temper economic
reform strategies with policies designed to promote social equity." 
Such a prescription has featured highly in the deliberations of theUnited
Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC)
which had convened the first-ever Caribbean Ministerial meeting on poverty
in 1996. "Income distribution hasn't changed in the past decade," a recent
ECLAC study revealed. "High levels of inequality persist and several
countries have the most concentrated income distribution in the world."
"This has happened even in countries that have achieved significant growth
rates," the study said. ECLAC said that "reciprocal conditioning between
growth and equity andthe distributive content of development depends
critically on the application of policies that promote wider social
distribution of the benefits of economic growth." Consequently, the smaller
economies of the region continue to face more than their fair share of
challenges. In St. Lucia, for example, the decline in earnings from the
banana industry and negative growth in the light manufacturing sector over
recent years have been blamed for high levels of poverty accounting for 18.7
percent of households and 25.1 percent of individuals. In that island, a
much-touted Poverty Reduction Fund set up in 1998 and which gained
widespread community support faced questions of corruption and led to
successive audits by the government. In the end, no evidence of corruption
was found though there were indications of "several administrative lapses
and infelicities."
 In Trinidad and Tobago, which has been benefiting from an expanding economy
and falling unemployment, vigilance remains the word in the monitoring of
poverty, and new mechanisms are being examined to alleviate the plight of an
arguably growing under-class. In 1998, for instance, a Hardship Relief Fund
was established to, among other things, offset up to 25 percent of the water
bills of poor households and, last year, a school-based Book Loan Scheme was
introduced targeting 53,000 students. "Effective poverty reduction must
incorporate policies and programs that are geared to alleviating the plight
of the poor, the socially displaced, the street children, the homeless and
the elderly," Finance Minister Brian Kuei Tung said in his budget
presentation last October. Many, however, dispute a claim by the government
that measures like an increase in government pensions to a minimum of $100 a
month hadeffectively lifted such persons out of the poverty cycle. There is
general recognition that further action in this area is needed. In Kuei
Tung's words: "The benefits from development are not always equitably or
fairly distributed." 
In a poverty assessment survey conducted in St. Vincent and theGrenadines,
researchers made a similar point with reference to the allocation and
availability of national resources. "The government needs to reorganize its
tax regime in such a way that it can continue to maintain balance, having
regard to the requirements to expand the economic and social infrastructure
and to provide a safety-net for the vulnerable," the survey said. Measures
such as these are specifically defined in the Declaration and Program of
Action of the 1995 World Summit for Social Development. But, in many cases,
Caribbean governments have been hard-pressed to comply in the face of sharp
declines in their economic fortunes. Addressing the recent General Assembly
of the Organization of American States, St. Lucian Foreign Minister George
Odlum noted that "the track record...is rather in the direction of reducing
assistance to developing countries and not increasing such assistance." "As
the new millennium beckons, a looming prospect of the digital divide
threatens to make the insecure people of the developing world even more
insecure and, consequently, even more desperate. 
Desperation breeds conflict," the minister warned. So far, countries of the
Caribbean have staved off such a response to growing insecurities, but
recent conflict in Guyana, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and persistent
political conflict in Jamaica are thought by some to be the seeds of a far
more volatile future.



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